About Face

‘What aren’t?’

‘Trusting you and trusting the information you’ve got.’

The Maggiore considered this. ‘One time when this man was out in Tessera, he got a call on his telefonino just as they were going into the office. He went back into the corridor to talk to whoever it was, but he didn’t close the door. He was giving directions to someone, and he told them to take the Number One to San Marcuola and to call him when he got off, and he’d meet him there.’

‘He was sure about San Marcuola?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes.’

Guarino glanced at Brunetti and smiled again. ‘I think we should stop sparring with one another now,’ he said. He sat up straighter and asked, ‘Shall we begin all over again, Guido?’ At Brunetti’s nod, he said, ‘My name is Filippo.’ He offered the name as if it were a peace offering, and Brunetti decided to accept it as such.

‘And the dead man’s name?’ asked a relentless Brunetti.

Guarino did not hesitate. ‘Ranzato. Stefano Ranzato.’

It took Guarino some time to explain in greater detail Ranzato’s descent from entrepreneur to tax evader to police spy. And from there to corpse. When he had finished, Brunetti asked, quite as though the Maggiore had not already refused to answer the question, ‘And what was in the trucks?’

This, Brunetti realized, was the moment of truth. Either Guarino would tell him or he would not, and Brunetti was by now very curious which choice the other man would make.

‘He never knew,’ Guarino said, then seeing Brunetti’s expression, he added, ‘At least that’s what he told me. He was never told, and the drivers never said anything. He’d get a call, and then he’d send his trucks where he was told to send them. Everything in order: bills of lading. He said very often things seemed legitimate to him, shipping from a factory to a train or from a warehouse to Trieste or Genova. And he said at the beginning it was a lifesaver’ — Brunetti heard him stumble over that word — ‘for him because it was all off the books.’ Brunetti had the feeling that Guarino would be perfectly content to sit there for ever, talking about the dead man’s business.

‘None of this explains why you’re here, though, does it?’ Brunetti interrupted to ask. Instead of answering, Guarino said, ‘I think it’s a wild goose chase.’ ‘Try to be a little more specific, and then perhaps we’ll see about that,’ Brunetti suggested.

Guarino, looking suddenly tired, said, ‘I work for Patta.’ Then he added, by way of explanation, ‘Sometimes I think everyone works for Patta. I didn’t know his name until today, when I met him, but I recognized him immediately. He’s my boss, and he’s most of the bosses I’ve ever had. Yours just happens to be called Patta.’

‘I’ve had a few who don’t have the same name,’ Brunetti said, but added, ‘just the same nature.’ Guarino’s answering smile helped both of them relax again.

Relieved to see that Brunetti understood, Guarino went on, ‘Mine — my Patta, that is — sent me here to find the man who got the phone call at Ranzato’s office.’

‘So he expects you to go to San Marcuola and stand there and shout Ranzato’s name and see who looks guilty?’

‘No,’ Guarino answered without a smile. He scratched at his ear, and said, ‘None of the men in my squad is Venetian.’ In response to Brunetti’s startled look, he said, ‘Some of us have been working here for years, but it’s not the same as having been born here. You know that. We’ve checked the arrest records for anyone who lives near San Marcuola with a history of violence, but the only two men we’ve found are both in jail. So we need local help, the sort of information you have, or can get, and we can’t.’

‘You don’t know where to look for what you want to know,’ Brunetti said, stretching out a palm in front of him. ‘And I don’t know what was in those trucks,’ he continued, putting out the other. He moved them up and down in a balancing gesture.

Guarino gave him a level glance and then said, ‘I’m not at liberty to discuss that.’

Encouraged by this frankness, Brunetti changed course. ‘Did you speak to his family?’

‘No. His wife’s destroyed by this. The man who did speak to her said he was sure she wasn’t pretending. She had no idea what he was doing, neither did the son, and the daughter goes home only two or three times a year.’ He gave Brunetti a moment to assess this and then added, ‘Ranzato told me they didn’t know, and I believed him. I still do.’

‘When did you speak to him?’ Brunetti asked. ‘The last time, I mean.’

Guarino looked at him directly. ‘The day before he died. Was murdered, that is.’

‘And?’

‘And he said he wanted to stop, that he’d already given us enough information and didn’t want to do it any more.’

Dispassionately, Brunetti observed, ‘From what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound as if he gave you much information at all.’ Guarino pretended not to have heard this, so Brunetti decided to give him a poke and said, ‘Just as you’re not giving me much.’

Once more, his words bounced off Guarino. Brunetti asked, ‘Did he seem nervous?’

‘No more than he had ever been,’ Guarino answered calmly, adding, almost reluctantly, ‘He wasn’t a brave man.’

‘Few of us are.’

Guarino glanced at him sharply and appeared to shrug the idea away. ‘I don’t know about that,’ the Maggiore said, ‘but Ranzato wasn’t.’

‘He had no reason to be, did he?’ Brunetti asked, defending the dead man as much as the principle. ‘He was in over his head: first he cheated on his taxes, which forced him into doing something illegal, then he got caught by the Finanza, who turned him over to the Carabinieri, and they forced him into doing something dangerous. If he had reason to be anything, it wasn’t brave.’

‘You seem awfully sympathetic,’ Guarino said, making it sound like a criticism.

This time it was Brunetti who shrugged and said nothing.

4

In the face of Brunetti’s silence, Guarino chose to move away from the dead man’s character. ‘I told you. I’m not at liberty to provide you with full information about the cargoes,’ he said with more than a touch of asperity.

Brunetti resisted the urge to observe that everything Guarino had said since they began to talk made that evident. He turned his gaze away from his visitor and stared out the window. For some time, Guarino allowed the joint silence to continue. Brunetti played the conversation back from the beginning, and liked very little of what he heard.

The silence expanded, but Guarino gave no sign of being made nervous by it. After what seemed, even to himself, an inordinately long time, Brunetti removed his feet from the drawer and set them on the floor. He leaned towards the man on the other side of his desk. ‘Are you used to dealing with dull people, Filippo?’

‘Dull?’

‘Dull. Slow to understand.’

Guarino glanced, almost against his will, at Brunetti, who smiled at him blandly and then turned his attention back to he contemplation of the view beyond the window.

Eventually Guarino said, ‘I suppose I am.’

Brunetti said, quite amiably, though without bothering to smile, ‘It must become a habit, after a while.’

‘Believing that everyone is dull?’

‘Something like that, yes, or at least behaving as if they were.’

Guarino considered this. At last he said, ‘Yes, I see. And I’ve insulted you?’

Brunetti’s eyebrows rose and fell as if by their own volition; his right hand sketched a short arc in the air.

‘Indeed,’ Guarino said and went silent.

The two men sat in companionable silence for a number of minutes until Guarino broke it by saying, ‘I really